This invention relates to a system and apparatus for enabling the establishment of the production history of materials subjected to a continuous process operation or to successive process operations.
In particular, the present invention is concerned with being able to establish i.e., trace, the production history of lengths, pieces; cut-lengths or the like of materials which have initially been produced in continuous strip or continuous length form.
A particular requirement for establishing production history arises in relation to the production of knitted, woven and/or non-woven fabric which, during production thereof is subjected to a large number of process operations and treatments, and which following the production is usually separated lengthwise into many pieces or cut-lengths of possibly highly variable cut-length. Often the pieces are attached together to form large bundles of cut-lengths having different initial production histories since they have been produced on different weaving or knitting machines and/or from different raw material batches.
As is very well known, fabrics whether knitted, woven or non-woven, are made from a large number of different materials such as, for example, natural fibers, man-made fibers, yarns or the like, and mixtures of natural and man-made fibers.
The natural materials can include materials such as wool, cotton, flax, and jute whilst man-made fibers or yarns made from natural or synthetic materials can include materials such as viscose rayons, cuproammonium viscose (both of the latter being made from natural materials) or synthetic materials such as polymers. The yarns whatever their origin can be spun from fibers of finite length or from fibers of infinite length. The finite length fibers are commonly called staple fibers whilst those of infinite length are termed filament fibers.
A yarn may comprises single fibers which are of the same thickness or may comprise fibers of different thicknesses.
Woven, non-woven and knitted fabrics (hereinafter collectively referred to as "fabrics") are made from specific yarns, with respect to their raw materials and fiber form with the yarns interlacing with a specific density and in a special or specific manner
Following the fabric forming operation most fabrics will require finishing operations to be effected thereupon. Such operations usually involve mechanical and/or chemical treatments which are intended to achieve the particular or specific desired properties for the finished fabric. These chemical and mechanical treatments can include, for example, singeing to burn-off protruding ends of individual fibers; desizing to remove starches which had been required during the weaving process; various wet stages including, for example, washing, bleaching, dyeing, and printing and other forms of after treatment such as preshrinking, stabilizing, wash-and-wear treatments etc.
In practice, pieces of fabric which have been subjected to different treatments in previous treatment stages maybe brought together to form batches for the purposes of carrying out one or more further treatments upon the assembled batches, such batches may be separated and mixed in different combinations for the purposes of additional treatment operation or operations.
It will thus be understood that for the purposes of process and quality assurance reasons it is very important to be able to keep a record i.e., keep-track-off, of every piece of fabric in respect of manufacturing data, the origin of the fiber yarns, the various process stages and treatments etc., that the particular piece of fabric has received, by which machine or machines, and which process operations have been effected on the piece of fabric.
Also, in the case of sub-standard pieces of fabric commonly called "seconds" it is important to be able to identify and establish the manufacturing history of the pieces of Fabric in question. In particular, for establishing where, how, and why during the production process the fabric piece was reduced to a sub-standard condition.
In the particular case of the manufacture of textile materials it is a well known problem to be able uniquely to recognize, that is identify, a specific piece of material so as to be able to establish upon which production machine it had been made; from which yarn batch or mixture the fabric arises; what was the finishing treatment route through which the fabric passed; when the fabric piece passed through that route; what was the finishing program prescribed for the material and so on. It will be understood that it is the answers to questions such as those mentioned that enable unique identification of the fabric piece and establishment of its manufacturing history to which subsequent reference may be made.
It is an object of the present invention to provide means for and a method of facilitating the establishment of the history and/or identification of a piece of fabric or other continuously produced material which is likely to be separated into cut-lengths for subsequent manufacturing treatments or use.